


since feeling is first

by queenklu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Curtain Fic, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That he wants to think this is Dean yanking a leash should make his blood run cold, not aching hot. It should make him sick, angry, it should get his fucking hackles up and make him fight.</p><p>He does want to fight. But there’s a skin-thin line between primal things, and fighting isn’t all he wants to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	since feeling is first

**Author's Note:**

> Written for anyothergirl415 in the spn_j2_xmas exchange. I know the Mods That Be put us together hoping for some Mike/Misha Christmas magic, but this prompt--Sam and Dean setting up a house, Dean taking a weird amount of pleasure in helping Sam fix up the house. Would love if a relationship developed because of it--grabbed me by the hair and smashed my face against the keyboard. 8| I hope you like it bb!

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/queenklu/pic/000ds963/)

  


~*~

“Yup,” Dean says as he shuts the door to the Impala with a satisfying metallic creak, “This is the place.”

“The place, huh?” Sam shoulders his bag without being careful, whacks his spine hard with the barrel of a gun because he’s so busy squinting at the dilapidated house through the settling dust they kicked up. It looks like it fell out of a fairy tale and died, lacy wood-work along the edges and curled rails all around the sagging porch, the house bulging out on the right hand side like it might have hopes of one day growing a tower. Sporadic glass in the windows, only half-heartedly and haphazardly boarded up. No grass on the lawn, though to be fair, it is November. Speaking of which— Sam’s skin pulls tight with goosebumps. “Tell me it has heat.”

“It will,” Dean says in a sort of off-hand way that makes Sam want to cover his face and groan. “Aw, buck up, Sammy,” he says with a fleeting smirk and a punch to Sam’s arm which barely connects, “We’ll be too busy working to notice the cold.”

“And in the winter, when we’re both too frozen solid to work?”

He can’t look at Dean, at whatever expression he’s got on his face at the slip of longevity. Sam might not be able to feel it, anyway.

Dean shrugs, soft lines around his eyes better than a grin as wide as the whole too-blue sky. “Eh, we’ll figure it out.”

For a moment, Sam, against all his better judgment, believes they will.

~*~

In a round-about way they have Sid Harper to thank, as faintly unsettling as it is to Sam that some stranger—no, some old _neighbor_ of Dean’s is responsible for the Winchester brothers being able to afford settling down. Before the guy got bit by a Djinn he’d been a banker, apparently, a fairly high-up position in a really low-end local bank in the town where Lisa and Ben (and Dean, for a time) used to live. Sid had smoothed over enough red tape to get Dean “Wesson”—a last name Sam doesn’t let himself think about too hard—a completely legitimate bank account when Dean could only provide some not-so-legitimate ID. So legit, in fact, that when Dean won fifty grand at a truck stop lotto in Nebraska last month, the money was wired directly to his account, no problem.

Sam kind of wishes he could tell himself he’d done his best to save the guy, but he’s starting to realize that isn’t true.

He’s not sure why Dean decided here and now instead of now and over there mending fences with Lisa, why Dean didn’t just cut and run, even before Sam got his soul back. Even after, when they realized it was going to take time for his soul to kick in. Dean could have run; it would have taken Sam a while to figure out how to blame him.

That Dean kept Sam close—that Dean grabbed him while his soul was still reeling, put him in the car, and drove as far away from the fight as he could get them on three full tanks of gas—should make him happy, and it does in a faintly flickering way. The inside of Sam’s head feels like a hundred thousand blown fuses on a good day. On a bad one…

He just needs to be still for a bit, let these dust mote feelings settle, and sometimes Sam thinks that’s Dean’s reasoning instead. That they just need to stay in one spot for a week or two, remember how to walk their crooked lines without falling over.

Dean bought the property, but there’s no reason he won’t sell it once they get the place livable. Or make sure that Sam is settled and leave.

~*~

They take a walk around the house, Dean pointing out this and that and other things until Sam gives up and fishes a gas receipt out of his back pocket to scribble stuff down that they’ll need to buy as it spills out of Dean’s mouth. He knew Dean was working construction the whole year Sam was back-but-gone, but it’s different knowing it and hearing Dean say things like, “I like those balusters but the rotted ones’ll be hard to replace,” and, “Looks like we’ll need a couple sheets of base ply underneath those loose shingles—put brads on the list, handful of sixteen-penny nails, a level, plane, finishing hammer for sure and yeah get a ladder while you’re at it, what the hell. Those look like asphalt shingles to you?” and, “I want to plumb bob that right wall, there, but that’s something we can make ourselves.”

“ _Plumb bob?_ ” Sam demands, so focused on getting it down that he almost walks into his brother. “Now you’re just making shit up.”

“Sounds dirty, right?” Dean grins without looking away from where his hand is skimming over peeling paint, and Sam ignores the phantom itch he gets whenever Dean’s attention isn’t completely on him. It’s ugly, this feeling, (feeling at all—no, _stop it, wrong_ ), and he’s stronger than that.

Dean insists on crawling underneath to get a look at the foundation, so they pry back some broken lattice-work under the porch and Sam shines a light, easier in his skin now that Dean’s bitching about the cobwebs and dust instead of acting quite so zen about the damn house. He keeps a running commentary the whole time he’s out of sight, which…helps. Sam doesn’t much care how, or why.

When Dean wriggles out twenty minutes later there’s dirt smeared over one lightly freckled cheekbone and a wry but satisfied smile on his mouth. “She’s sturdy,” he says, clasping Sam’s hand so he can be pulled upright. Sam has to tell himself to let go, but that’s easy enough. “The most trouble we’ll get from her is that wall if it’s swaybacked, and that could just be warped siding.”

“The house is a ‘she,’ now?” Because that’s an easy place to start. It creeps up on Sam, makes his limbs awkward and gangly again, kicked back to a time where Dean knew absolutely everything, always.

“Of course,” Dean says, sure as pie. He claps her side—and great, Sam’s already thinking ‘ _her.’_ “She’s a Francis, can’t you tell?”

She _is_ a Francis, is the thing. Sam stares at the house with something like dawning horror painted on his face because, because of course she is, how could she be anything else? An old squat Southern matron who carved herself into this bit of land to stay.

“If she’s haunted, I get to say I told you so from now until Kansas,” Sam says when can, following in Dean’s tracks as they head for the front door.

“Dude,” Dean says, “how awesome would that be?”

Dean’s foot snaps right down through the porch the first step he takes, and the look on his face makes Sam laugh until he feels sick, light-headed and crazy.

Crazy is a feeling. It’s just not something new.

~*~

Sam’s runs to Home Depot usually involve two items: rock salt, and lighter fluid. Sometimes rope, if he’s feeling impulsive. Not two whole carts near overflowing, so heavy with tools and supplies and god knows what else that Sam has to put real effort into hauling his around. Now he’s guarding them both while Dean talks shop with the orange vest down the aisle, Dean’s cart nudged up against his hand.

A couple is arguing quietly over paint colors at the other end of the aisle, the man insisting that her chosen shade of blue is ‘ _girly_ , Sasha, what kind of boy wants _periwinkle_ in his room?’ Sasha looks exhausted, at least seven months pregnant with a toddler clinging to her knee, a little girl with curls the color of prairie grass and eyes that remind Sam of Jess.

Sam’s been thinking more of Jess in these past couple weeks than he has in years. She wouldn’t recognize him…that’s pretty certain. Sometimes he wonders if he’d recognize her.

The little girl lets go of her mother and toddles toward Sam, one thumb tucked into her mouth, and something Sam thinks is unease puts the pads of its fingers to the nape of his neck. Her parents aren’t watching, something—someone—could— Child bones snap like a crackling fire, bone marrow pop pop popping in the heat and _don’t they realize there’s a monster near their baby?_

“Hey,” Dean says, suddenly there, suddenly frowning. “You good?”

Sam does his best not to flinch, even though it almost doesn’t sound like the question Dean probably means it to be. The girl wobbles herself into a sit—Sam _can’t_ look away, what if something happens—and Dean touches two fingers to Sam’s chest right on the edge of his sternum.

Sam’s heart stops, kicks in with a painful wrench and thumps double time. This isn’t—they don’t do this. Touching. It’s one hug per death, that’s the rule.

But he’s looking at his brother now, and Dean holds his gaze when he says, “Good?” again, like maybe if he says it enough times good is what Sam will be. Soaking up Dean’s attention should—shouldn’t— Sam doesn’t know what this feeling is. He’s not sure if he likes it.

Dean’s fingers press down a second before they pull away, slipping down under his breastbone and Sam has to fight the instinct to hold Dean’s hand there and show him how easy it is to dig into a person, right in the fleshy skin of their bellies. It wouldn’t be nearly as pretty as when Castiel did it, all red light and gentle screaming.

“So I was thinking a shag rug,” Dean says, pushing his lips forward in a face that can’t be taken seriously. “And a fountain, smack dab in the middle of the living room. Did you know they sell life-size gold cherubs in Home Decorating? I mean not, _life_ life size because it’d be a full grown naked dude with no real concept of personal space, but just in case you had your heart set on cherubs, Sammy? We can do it. They can help.”

Sam feels waterlogged, like he should shake seaweed out of his ears. “…What?”

“Or,” Dean talks over him as he gets a grip on his cart, “we could just paint everything black, slap some silver finishes around, oh!” He snaps his fingers. “Leather furniture! Like one of those L-couches—Dibs on the corner forever.”

“We’re not turning Francis into the Impala,” Sam says, voice rough. Dean looks surprised, and Sam tries to remember the last time he spoke.

“Yeah?” Dean starts, a smile creeping into his eyes before he coughs and turns his head. “That’s what you think.”

~*~

It’s a good thing Dean picked up his truck from Lisa’s—Sam’s not exactly sure what’s happening there, but they never would’ve fit everything in the Impala with or without Dean having a stroke at the damage to the upholstery, and Sam likes the truck, likes the room he has to sprawl. It doesn’t hurt that Dean lets him drive.

Sam has always liked driving, and not for control or power or dick extension, like some guys he could name. When his hands are on the wheel and his eyes are on the road he can feel Dean’s attention settle on him, warm and sure the way it sometimes isn’t, most times can’t be. Basking, that’s a good word. Sam let’s himself bask a little, and Dean lets himself look.

This is normal. This is good.

It should probably make him uncomfortable, the scrutiny, how Dean is watching the exact same way he studies the Impala’s engine when she hiccups. But Sam hasn’t quite remembered how to worry, or when. He’s got a feeling telling him to push at Dean, bristle and bark and back into a corner; Sam shuts it down. He and Dean are good, steady, why would he rock the boat?

Dean’s gaze shifts a second before he stretches, and Sam looks over in time to catch a silhouette of brown leather and the pale slip of his belly against the yellowy sunlight spilling into the truck. “Mmf…Long day.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, because he’s been making sure he participates in conversation since he caught himself. He glances at the blue tarp in the back fluttering against more bungee cords than they knew what to do with, having bought the jumbo pack. “Think we got enough stuff?”

“You laugh, but—“ Dean shrugs, working at a kink in his shoulder. “Probably not. God, I’m starving.”

“I think we passed a diner a while back.” Sam’s already looking for a pull-off. “I can turn around—“

“Nah, we shouldn’t leave so much stuff in the back unattended. Just find me a Whopper.” Dean sinks low in his seat. “And wake me up when you do. I’ll do a grocery run tomorrow.”

Sam’s thumbs fit in the grooves of the steering wheel perfectly, a slick plastic glide under his knuckles. “I could, I…” His foot eases off the gas without his say-so. “I could do it.”

Dean grunts and there it is, his eyes are back on Sam. “What now?”

“I could get groceries.” He makes his voice sound stronger than the hollow ringing in his chest. Nods. “You’ve probably got stuff you could get started without me getting in the way, right? We’ll figure out a list and I can burn the last of the bad cards paying for it. No problem.”

“Yeah,” Dean says after a moment, “Okay.”

Sam smiles against the grain and pushes the accelerator back down.

~*~

Francis has electricity, thank god for small favors, but the fuses like to blow if they plug in more than two things in the entire house, which is huge and empty and quiet, still largely unexplored. When Sam comes down from a lukewarm drizzle of a shower Dean is scowling at the Harvest Gold refrigerator that came with the place with his arms crossed, daring it to fall apart. It gives an ominous gurgle.

“We’re gonna need straight-razors.” It’s half a question, but Sam rubs a hand over the scruff coming in so he can’t see when Dean’s gaze doesn’t slide to him.

Dean just shrugs, which isn’t an answer. Objectively Sam knows that Dean hasn’t liked non-electric razors since the little girl in the painting who liked impersonating Sweeney Todd, but he still catches himself holding his breath, waiting for a yes or no. It grates, fingernails dragging the wrong way across his stubble, crawling up Sam’s spine. He wants to _know,_ god damn it, he can’t keep literally holding his breath just _waiting_.

“ _Dean.”_ He gets out his brother’s name but it’s strangled, tension shifting almost instantly when Dean’s attention darts to him. Sam doesn’t know what to do with the sudden surge of self-loathing flooding the empty honey-comb caverns in his bones, locking his joints, how pathetic, how fucking pathetic that he needs—he needs—

“Sam, _Sam—_ “

Sam knocks his hands back, doesn’t know what he’d do if Dean deliberately touched him twice in one day. “It’s okay, it’s—”

“Stop it,” Dean says, voice tight as the grip he gets on Sam’s arms, sharp teeth gritted and bared. His hands barely fit around the muscle there, and it makes Sam want to peel off his own flesh until he’s small enough. “Do you feel fine? Then stop fucking saying that you are.”

Sam is too still for his own good, lungs quivering as they fight the need for air. Some dim switch flips in his head, a blown fuse flickering in the back of his skull. He wants to obey—it terrifies him how much he wants to obey, and there’s a new feeling he could have done without coming back—but he doesn’t know _how._

Terror finally shakes the breath out of his lungs and adrenaline drags it back in. It’s not soon enough to keep his vision from going grey, and he’s falling before he knows his legs are buckling. Warm air hits his skin from Dean’s curses, Dean’s fingertips digging bruises into his arms as he tries to minimize the damage. _Nice,_ Sam thinks, _that’s nice,_ and a laugh shudders out of his mouth.

He hasn’t felt this scared since Hell. Since the _early_ days of Hell, and _Fuck, don’t think about Hell, don’t don’t please don’t._

He thinks about Dean all tangled up with him on the floor, instead, one leg twisted under Sam’s, the other wrapped around his back, arms holding Sam like a vice between them. Thinks about how heavy Dean’s head is on Sam’s shoulder, near enough that Sam could feel Dean’s lashes brush his skin if he blinks. Thinks about how Dean is wondering one thing so hard Sam can feel it like an echo around the draining panic in his veins: _What the hell did I do?_

Sam wishes more than anything that he knew.

“I’ve got to set up salt lines,” Dean says after an eternity. Fear jitters through Sam’s frame and Dean holds on until it passes, and he still hasn’t blinked. “Sam. Sammy, will you be okay for ten minutes?”

Some far off part of him wants to scream, _Of course! The fuck do I need you for, I’m not a child!_ But Sam smothers it ruthlessly. He can’t handle feeling anything else right now, already shaking with the effort of staying in one piece. He keeps his face hidden in his arms and knees and makes his shoulders shrug enough to push Dean away, wouldn’t trust his voice right now for the world. He doesn’t know if he’ll be okay.

Dean hesitates long enough that Sam can feel his lashes move, and then he’s gone and moving fast, the thump-and-creak of Francis’ floorboards and the _shhhhhh_ sound of salt being poured. But it’s closer than the door, and when Sam pries his own lashes apart he can see Dean no more than four feet away, laying down the circle, turned towards Sam. He watches his brother set up their battered old sleeping bags with their duffels thrown down for pillows, Dad’s Colt and Ruby’s knife nestled in between.

Dean watches Sam.

When he’s finished he stands up straight with a breath meant to steady, walks over to Sam and places his cold dry hand firmly on the sweat-and-shower-damp skin at the nape of Sam’s neck. Sam jerks, can’t help it, what the fuck is he supposed to do with all this _touching?_ And Dean is there when his flinch brings his startled gaze up to meet Dean’s eyes.

There’s that breath again, a long slow inhale Sam hears every time Dean’s about to do something life-threateningly stupid. “Sam,” he says, low and strong and not an inch of give, “stop shaking.”

Sam does.

It could just be shock; Sam is certainly feeling enough of that. (And he’s still _feeling_ , why hasn’t it shut off yet?) Dean looks surprised too, and kind of confused and definitely wary, like he’s just waiting for the head-butt to knock him on his ass. But it doesn’t come, and Sam’s holding his breath again, mouth impossibly dry as he waits for…something more.

“Stand,” Dean says with a barely there hitch in his voice from clearing his throat, offering Sam a hand up. Sam takes it, leg muscles watery, doesn’t let go until Dean does. “Good. Now, uh, bed.”

It should feel degrading, being ordered around like a dog. It _should_. Sam wants to feel insulted, but he gets tangled up somewhere in the tone of Dean’s voice and the uneasiness of wanting settles somewhere underneath the warmth of knowing whatever Dean tells him to do is something _good._

Dean has been giving orders ever since he figured out about Sam’s soul, and Sam has obeyed. Blindly, unhesitatingly, instantly. This isn’t new, except. Sam has a soul now, something has to be different.

He’s light-headed enough to pass out, fingers thick and clumsy on the sleeping bag zipper until Dean does it for him, bumping their knuckles together and waiting until Sam shifts clumsily down into the bag before sealing him inside.

Looking at Dean at this moment would kill him. Bad enough that he might actually stay dead this time. He crushes his shoulder between his bodyweight and the floor, the hot pinprick of Dean’s focus curdling the blood in his spine.

 _What just happened?_

~*~

To say Sam gets up early might suggest that he wakes up, that he slept at all. He doesn’t miss not-sleeping, exactly, but he slept for three days straight after he got his soul back and everything feels out of alignment still, off. That’s his story, anyway.

Dean’s breathing is so calm and even and close it takes almost twenty minutes of dawn light creeping through the sky for Sam to work up the motivation to move. Adding another ten minutes to work the zipper down on the sleeping bag as quiet as he can, Sam figures he’ll only have to wait a couple hours in the parking lot for a grocery store to open.

Dean is going to panic when he wakes up to Sam gone. This should really be enough to stop him.

But the tug of the gear shift into neutral and the burn in his muscles as he pushes the truck away from the house feels natural, good even, and he’s coming back. Dean won’t know it, but he’s coming back.

And this will give Dean time to get away, if he needs it.

They never did put together a list, but Sam was the one who bought groceries for himself and Jess for a solid year and a half, once upon a time. He knows the basics: bread, cheese, deli meat for lunches; pasta, sauce, burgers, buns, hotdogs, ketchup, relish, mustard, lettuce for dinner. More veggies. They’d unearthed an ancient barbeque behind the house yesterday; Dean will get a kick out of grilling. He probably did it every weekend at Lisa’s. Sam shoves a bag of coal under the cart; they already have lighter fluid and matches at ho—

Steaks. Sam gets steaks and doesn’t look at the blood.

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he fumbles Bert Gracin’s credit card right out of his wallet and onto the conveyor belt. The cashier’s eyebrows snap together like the gates of hell slamming shut, or two furry caterpillars butting heads. An uncomfortable laugh catches somewhere lower than his throat. He hadn’t realized how alone he is, here, how vulnerable without Dean.

“You need a smoke or something?” The kid is young, younger than Sam can remember being right now. He’d break so easy.

Sam drops the pen before—just, before. “Or something.”

He needs his brother. He needs his brother. He needs his _brother_.

The cashier gets his things rung up with lightning speed and no finesse, no second glance at the signature on the receipt. Sam makes a mental note to try the detoxing junkie act again next time they’re worried about a card going through, then discards the thought. They don’t need to con people any more.

They’re so much better at conning themselves.

~*~

Francis is waiting for him at the end of their driveway, a stern, quiet disapproval radiating from every inch of her peeling paint and the hollow pits of her damaged windows. The Impala is wrapped up in a protective cover exactly where Dean left it. Having once _been_ Dean’s car, Sam doesn’t need to stretch his imagination to feel the cold shoulder she’s giving him. The sun is blistering bright but the air is chilled.

Dean is gone.

 _Or not in the house,_ Sam tells the panic welling up in his belly. God damn it, stop, stop, he’d been doing better, he’d been—perfectly numb. He can’t say fine.

He tells himself Dean wouldn’t leave the Impala, but the image of Dean taking off across the field and into the woods on foot makes Sam want to heave. It still takes everything he has not to run outside and scream for Dean until his brother comes. How did this _happen?_ How did Sam get this way?

Dean isn’t outside. Dean isn’t—

Sam circles the building again, hand tight enough in his hair he knows he’s pulling strands out by the roots. The sun beats down on his skin, pulling it tight, stretching his lungs, and Dean is gone. Dean is really gone.

“Yo.”

“Jesus Ch—“ Sam chokes, heart pulsing hard enough to hurt. Shielding his eyes against the glare takes more effort than it should, but…god, worth it, to see Dean silhouetted against the sky, so far over his head it takes Sam’s breath away. The careless, vulnerable dangle of his brother’s legs over the edge of the roof. Sunlight hiding Dean’s face, bleaching the skin of his knuckles where he’s holding onto the gutter.

“Groceries?” Dean’s voice is gruff. Indecipherable.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and he wants so childishly to point out that Dean had told him he could go. “And I—I got a cooler and some ice in case the fridge gives out.”

Dean’s foot sways; Sam’s air vanishes. When had he placed himself exactly in the path of Dean falling?

“Huh,” Dean says, a little nothing of a syllable eaten immediately by the sky. When he retracts his legs Sam feels it rib deep.

“Are you coming up or do I have to do this whole god damn roof myself?”

Sam jumps, flinches, but nothing comes out of his mouth fast enough to keep Dean from slipping out of sight. A quick stop at the truck and he heads inside, taking the steps three at a time, palms burning against the icy glide of glass in his hands. The master bedroom—the only one with a working shower—has a window that opens out on top of the bulbous almost-a-tower on the ground floor, and Dean has wedged a shiny metal ladder in well enough between it and the wall that Sam can climb mostly one-handed, bottles clinking between his fingers.

Dean is sitting on top of Francis’s chimney, elbows braced on the torn knees of his rattiest jeans, streaks of dirt and something darker smeared around his hands and wrists, one smudge licking high up on his elbow. The bricks underneath him look steady, and Sam knows this new, responsible-construction-worker-Dean would never go up on a roof that wasn’t solid, but the drop is right _there_ and the world goes on forever in every direction, waiting to swallow his brother whole.

“Hey, I, uh. Beer.” Sam puts a smile on his face as he hands off a bottle that Dean takes with barely a glance, and then he’s right back where he started.

A twist of silver ring pops the top and sends it spinning onto the broken shingles beneath Dean’s feet. The bottle spins between his palms, wet label peeling off beneath his calluses. Dean takes a breath, then takes a pull.

Sam thinks he might fall over with relief, or something like it. Even though he shouldn’t; this doesn’t mean anything. “Are you—I’ll make lunch, if you want to take a break. I got—“

“I’m good,” Dean cuts him off. Sam’s stomach starts to drop, and then Dean catches it. “Go eat something, Sam.”

Each word is deliberate enough to make Sam’s breath catch. He wants to hold onto the rush under his skin with both hands, wants to ask _Really?_ just to hear Dean tell him again. Jesus, this is what he needs, what he’s needed all morning. There’s shame somewhere, maybe just embarrassment, but Sam can hardly feel it over the rush of relief and security.

And he’s _feeling_. This is good. He nods almost too fast, then ducks his head and half-turns to leave. He doesn’t want to see Dean’s expression when he obeys.

He’s not fast enough.

“Oh shit, don’t do that, Sam.”

Sam obediently stills, waiting for a correction, all before he realizes it’s the worst thing he could do. It knocks a noise out of Dean like he’s just been thrown into a wall.

“You don’t have to jump-to anymore,” Dean grinds out, like it’s painfully obvious and killing him to say. “You’ve got your soul, you shouldn’t—God damn it.”

Somewhere far off Sam’s blood is running cold, pinching his veins down to nothing. “I don’t—“ _mind,_ but he does, fuck, he needs it. “Dean,” he forces out, “it’s okay.”

“I don’t know what the hell to do with this.” Dean drags a hand over his jaw and lets it drop, like Sam never spoke at all. “Fuck, Sam, it always used to be a fight with you and now—now I’m freaking out because it feels like you might take a dive off the roof if I told you to.”

Dean won’t look at him; he doesn’t even raise his voice, because he knows his quiet, defeated tone will hit Sam harder than a screaming match. Sam’s fingers _cramp_ they want so badly to flip the breaker and blow another fuse inside his head, and it takes everything he has to dig his nails into the frustration that flares up every time Dean punches a button he has no right to know about, clinging to that anger instead of atrophying numbness.

“You’d never ask me to,” Sam hears himself say, bangs slipping free from where he’d shoved them to curl around his eyes. Then, “Or if you did, I’d know I deserved it.”

Dean’s eyes snap to him, but he won’t come at Sam up here where one wrong step could send them both toppling over the edge. Something pulls in Sam’s belly, longing and relief tumble-drying in a sloppy mess of needs.

But he lets—makes—himself meet Dean’s gaze and hold. It’s so much to ask, maybe too much, maybe. There’s so much trust and love spinning up through Sam Dean has to feel it, _has to_ , it’s everything, it’s Sam’s mouth above the water and everything else submerged.

A soft breeze is enough to make Sam sway and break the spell. Dean’s eyes are wide, shocked green and fixed down on the roof.

Sam drags in enough air to speak, to say, “I want to make lunch,” as clearly as he possibly can. Dean flinches the way he does when bottles smash too close to his eyes, so Sam knows he gets it. _I would never do something you asked that I didn’t want to do._

 _I would walk off the edge if you told me to._

Sam’s ears are ringing with the thump of his boots against the metal ladder rungs as he descends, but there’s an echo that doesn’t fit, that he can’t place until he’s climbed in through the window and feels Dean so close on his heels he almost trips. Dean backs him into a wall, as solid and far from any drop as Dean can get them before his hand locks in Sam’s shirt.

“Don’t do that,” Dean hisses, words hot against Sam’s neck because he has his head tipped down, his gaze caught somewhere close to Sam’s pulse. There’s a canyon of space between them and the bruising pressure of his knuckles against Sam’s chest, Dean’s anger sparking through the air hard enough to make Sam’s hair stand on end. But this is an order, this is an order Dean _means._ “Don’t you do that to me, Sam. Anything else, but don’t make me try to live through that.”

The fuse is blown before Sam can take a breath, and suddenly he can’t remember how to feel, like he can’t remember being born. There’s something he should be doing, something he should know in the set of Dean’s jaw and the creases around his eyes, but he—he _can’t._

Dean lets go the instant Sam’s clumsy fingers reach for him, for something steady to hold onto. Dean might not have even seen; he’s out the window and up the ladder before Sam can work out how to blink.

~*~

Sam feels better after lunch. Well, Sam _feels_ , which is just about the same thing.

They work on the roof the rest of the day, ripping up broken shingles and dropping them in handfuls over the edge into an empty box Dean had set up for exactly this reason. If there was anyone else within a ten mile radius, Dean explains, they’d have to call out, “Headache!” to let people know to watch their heads. Sometimes he forgets and shouts it anyway. Sam never calls him on it; Dean blushes anyway.

He’s going to sunburn and Sam can’t make himself say anything, because after Dean burns he freckles like a little kid. There were months in hell Sam would’ve done anything for an hour of teasing Dean’s freckles. And he does— _did_ —mean anything.

When he remembers how to be honest with himself, that was maybe the only breaker that didn’t completely short-circuit. Needing Dean.

It’s harder work than it seems like it should be, but each time Dean says, “Hand me that,” or, “No, hold it like this,” it’s a surge of something wonderful. It’s stepping into sunlight, it’s running just to run; Sam slips into a headspace that feels clean-good-safe-real, where nothing exists except the tools under his hands and the warmth of his brother at his side. The worried sideways glances only ground him, really.

Some part of Sam forgot he could _make_ things with his hands.

“We should stop, Sammy,” Dean says, collar damp against his pinking skin. Sam blinks a little at how low the sun is, and the dim realization that it’s been a while since Dean has said anything. There’s something off in his voice, but Sam can’t place it.

“I’ll make dinner,” Sam offers. “You’ve been working longer.”

“Yeah, I’ll just.” Dean goes to rub the back of his neck and hisses at the sting, a soft, confused, disappointed noise that Sam wants to inhale. “Shit, _ow_. I’m just going to finish up here.”

“…Okay.” It’s…well, it’s not quite an order, but Sam’s been drunk on them all day, it doesn’t really matter.

“Sam—“ Dean starts, and something that had loosened in Sam pulls taught.

“It’s okay, Dean,” he says too quickly. It’s the Winchester double-talk; he could mean dinner, Dean might even let himself think Sam means dinner. Just because his smile is faint doesn’t mean it’s not there.

“Sam _,_ ” Dean starts again.

“It’s good, I’m _fine,_ ” Sam says, because—because Dean has to get that, Dean told him not to say he’s fine when he isn’t.

Dean is pale under his burn and dirt smudged, something shaking in his frame that Sam isn’t supposed to see. As fast as Sam escapes he can’t escape that.

~*~

Dean doesn’t tell him to do anything the rest of the night. Sam does his best not to notice. It shouldn’t be something he needs so badly. He doesn’t. Need it. He tells himself he doesn’t need it.

It takes an ugly amount of effort to keep the strain from showing the longer Dean looks at him and _doesn’t do it._ If he was just absently forgetting Sam might be able to think of something else, instead of fighting to ignore the feeling that Dean is dissecting him under a brutal kind of microscope.

Sam has been dissected. He’s watched every layer of himself be peeled back ( _skin nerves muscles veins bones organs)_ and son of a _bitch._ Sam’s hands clench so hard he can’t feel them for the loss of blood.

He leaves food out on the counter. Dean puts it away. Sam hisses at a splinter and Dean silently passes him the First Aid. Sam asks how to plumb bob a wall and Dean says he’ll tell him in the morning, gaze too green and steady the whole time.

If Sam tosses and turns for a fitful hour and a half hoping Dean will order him to sleep, well it doesn’t fucking work. He knows Dean isn’t sleeping, Dean knows he knows, and Sam chokes on an actual whine as the floorboards bruise his shoulders and hell tries to claw back into his mind’s eye.

When he wakes up every inch of him aches, muscles bunched tight and knotted, hip bones grinding where he slept on them for too long in one tightly cramped position. Emotions he doesn’t want coil low in his belly, slippery and dangerous. He feels like a dead thing left for bait.

Dean stirs and Sam makes himself sit up, prove that he still can. He needs to keep moving, fists his hands in their dirty clothes and pushes them inside an empty duffle, wonders if they even have quarters left for laundry.

Dean’s spine cracks loud enough to make Sam flinch when he sits up—( _snap crackle pop rice krispies,_ Lucifer’s echo whispers) and something small and savage in Sam wants to cry out. “Sleeping pads,” Dean groans, half a breath, “Was gonna ask you to get sleeping pads.”

 _But you_ didn’t. Sam rips a hem without meaning to, isn’t focused on anything but keeping his voice from coming out furious and shaking. “Why don’t we just get a bed?”

Dean chokes on a cough. Sam shoots him an off-center glare; if Dean’s sick they aren’t going up on the roof, end of story.

“Did you see a Laundromat in town?” Sam bites out, pins-and-needles numbness skittering through his legs as he stands. One of his knuckles needs badly to be popped, but he’s not sure he can unclench his fist from the duffle straps.

“Yeah, I think… Remember the giant armadillo motel by the hardware store? Think there’s one in the parking lot.”

 _Please just tell me. Please, please just tell me to._

“Great,” Sam says when Dean doesn’t.

Anger slides down his skin like a slit wrist, confused hurt drying it tacky. Why is Dean holding out on him? Did he do something _wrong_?

The duffle gets thrown in the truck with a shriek-shudder-slam of old metal, and Sam can’t leave, not this time. Dean’s such a fucking _moron_ and he hasn’t said Sam could go.

~*~

It’s not an order-by-omission, as much as Sam would like to think—and that he wants to think this is Dean yanking a leash should make his blood run cold, not aching hot. It should make him sick, angry, it should get his fucking hackles up and make him fight.

He does want to fight. But there’s a skin-thin line between primal things, and fighting isn’t all he wants to do.

~*~

If Dean is surprised to see Sam not-gone (why would he be, he probably watched Sam slam the door) he doesn’t look it, doesn’t look anything but like a man facing off a wounded cougar with a gun. Maybe he even has a gun. Sam isn’t sure he remembers how to care.

His brother’s hand twitches at the tools, almost in a wave, and Sam’s body braces. He’ll have to say something now.

“You know what to do.”

If they weren’t on the roof Sam would lunge at him. And Dean knows.

~*~

The hours drag, clawing along splintering wood by their fingernails. Within ten minutes Sam has thought of how to kill a human ten different ways with every tool up here, and thirty ways to make them cry.

(Dean probably knows more, or used to. A black, Lucifer-tinged thought wonders if they should compare notes. _Did you learn about Chinese water torture? Ever try it with blood?_ )

Sam’s hands start shaking around noon. Surely— _surely_ Dean will have to tell him to either go make lunch or order him to stay here while Dean does it.

When the bagged sandwich hits him in the thigh it knocks a shuddery breath out of his lungs. Which is better than a scream, but only barely.

Dean planned for this, and Sam doesn’t even know when.

~*~

He doesn’t eat—if he had anything in his stomach at all it would’ve hit the rain gutter already. He has half a thought to try eating just to see if Dean would break at the sight of his little brother being sick, but he’s trembling too badly; he doesn’t want to risk taking Dean with him over the roof’s edge.

Dean calls an end to the day any time between three and seven, Sam can’t see well enough to tell. It’s just enough of a decree to keep his hands and feet from slipping on the ladder as he descends, and there’s a disembodied moment of terror when he doesn’t know where Dean is before his brother steadies him when the last rung disappears.

“Sam?”

This isn’t anything like being wrapped up too tight in his head to hear Dean. He’s too far outside it to react.

“Sam—Sammy? Jesus Christ,” Dean breathes. Then, each word wrenched loose and clenched tight, “Can you try to stop shaking?”

There’s honest guilt and worry buried in the cadence of his name and the bite of his fingers and Sam slams back into himself so fast his vision spins, and there’s only one story to fall. Dean’s back hits the house, crushed between the ladder and a wall and Sam—Sam’s nails cut into Dean’s wrists hard enough to draw blood, still shaking. His kneecaps dig in perfect above Dean’s, bone and cartilage slide-grinding into place. Not all of their bones fit so well. He wants to take their skeletons apart and put them back together right, or chip them into pieces until no one will be able to tell which is Sam and which is Dean.

The one breaker that hasn’t been taped back together with bits of glass and wire flickers, a spray of sparks that’s just enough to see by. He would lose Dean’s bark if he just had his bones. He’d miss sunburned freckles and the give of Dean’s skin under his hands, and how has he gotten so addicted to something he hasn’t been allowed to touch?

Sam presses his face to Dean’s burn and breathes in, and Dean’s throat constricts with the words that could make this end, tendons shifting under Sam’s mouth. All he has to do is say, _Stop._ Sam is sure he could stop if Dean told him to.

“What are you—“ Dean cuts off with a startled, pained gasp as Sam’s teeth bite into his sunburn. “Jesus, _fuck,_ Sam—“

 _Fuck._ A hundred thousand voices clamor up like demons in the pit, hissing, screaming, _Fuck fuck did he say fuck did he say fuck Sam?_ His lower back spasms before his brain can ride the crescendo to the surface, hips shoving once against Dean looking for a place where they fit.

The spike of good feeling is enough to make his neck arch, tugging his face back into Dean’s eye line. There’s some small shred of him that wants Dean to see…what he is. All that’s left of his baby brother. Just some needy damaged thing.

“Tell me,” Sam breathes, “just tell me to stop.”

Dean’s thighs tense against-under-beneath Sam’s weight, and the only thing that could be making him hesitate has to be the drop from this squat little tower. Sam doesn’t understand—Sam would survive the fall, might not even break anything. If Dean wants freedom all he has to do is—

“Figure it out your own damn self,” Dean snarls so low it almost isn’t human.

Sam knows from not human. And _that_ was an order.

He takes a breath, lets his thoughts spin out into probabilities and fact-finding, counting Dean’s heartbeats under his palms, the flare of his irises. But that can’t— His fingers flex around Dean’s wrists and his pulse spikes, Dean’s jaw clenching tight as he tilts his head back to drop his lashes, hide his eyes. That’s a _tell._

“You don’t want me to,” Sam whispers, even though he has to be wrong.

Dean shifts, deliberately, and Sam’s hold tightens before he realizes his brother isn’t trying to get away. And that is not a hammer in his pocket.

An entire lifetime of habit makes Sam try to flinch away, and instantly Dean’s hands are there, still caught in Sam’s grasp but holding on, too, keeping him away from the edge. Dean won’t lift his head even though his eyes are blown wide open, he won’t let Sam look at his face.

“I’m the _last_ goddamned person you should trust with this.”

Fury wells up exactly how his demon power used to, a slick inferno that Sam recognizes as something he never really lost—How can Dean be so stupid? How the fuck can he not see that even if Sam had anyone else, trusting them over Dean isn’t even an _option._

One hand shifts to Dean’s thigh, hauls him up closer, harder, flush (because—because Dean has to know, has to understand, has to be shown) and Dean chokes out something, sounds like, “God, Sam, st—“

Sam shoves the words back into Dean’s mouth with his tongue, and it’s so hot and wet it feels like jumping into gasoline with his skin on fire. Dean doesn’t want him to stop but he’ll say it and Sam will, and it might kill them both if he does.

It takes too long to sink in, what he’s doing, where his lips are, what his hands are touching, too late to do anything but _more._ Kiss harder, kiss— _Dean, Dean, my brother Dean_ —deeper, hold tighter, yank Dean’s thigh higher until he has to hitch it over Sam’s or fall, and Dean won’t let them fall. Dean has never let Sam fall.

“Sam—God damn it, _Sam—“_ Dean rips one hand free before Sam can do more than think he’s doing it wrong, he hasn’t figured out what Dean wants like Dean told him to, and then Dean hooks that arm around the back of Sam’s neck and hauls him in so close someone drawls blood. It could be Dean’s, could be Sam’s, doesn’t matter, _it’s all the same._

Dean is so hard against Sam it’s making him dizzy, pleasure spiking so high so fast he can’t breathe. Dean rocks up and Sam grinds down, his free hand on Dean’s skin under his shirt catching the rapid-fire thump of his heart in the palm of his hand. Fuck, if he touched Dean’s cock it’d kill him, salted and burned, but the thought of it—the image of spreading Dean wide and devouring him whole might make Sam’s knees buckle if he could feel them at all.

He doesn’t know how long it is before Dean’s hips jerk wildly, helplessly, and Sam’s hand drops to press him closer, like he can absorb Dean’s come into his skin through two pairs of jeans and some well-worn boxer briefs. But God, it’s almost better this way, Dean’s making such a mess of himself for Sam, and Sam nuzzles the side of Dean’s blissed out face and thinks, _Thank you, thank you._

Sam’s skin is crisping from the heat still between them, the—god—the need, the pure fucking _needwantgivetakehaveholdmineminemine_ that has always been Dean in his head, always always always and never, always never. Sam remembers not having a soul and thinking _selfish_ when he demanded Dean’s attention like a birthright, remembers thinking _huh, greed is an emotion,_ but greed is nothing like this. Calling this greed is like calling the Impala a rusting heap of scrap metal.

This is—this is— He knows the feel of his own soul by now, but this is something he was never supposed to have, this is _Dean’s_. And maybe a few weeks ago he would have snatched it away like he did everything else, but now he places smeared fingerprints against Dean’s pulse and cuts it off, keeps this piece of himself inside Dean’s sunburned freckled skin where it belongs, and comes and comes and _god fucking—Dean._ It’s wrenched out of him, torn free, so good it hurts, so good he can’t see.

And when he can see, it’s all Dean. Green eyes wide and dark. Mouth kissed raw.

Sam’s legs give out and Dean catches him, muscles them both inside through the window even though he’s none too steady himself, but between the two of them they somehow manage not to fall and break anything. When Dean hesitates inside, swaying a little under Sam’s arm, it takes a minute to figure out his brother is staring at the only working shower with something like a grimace on his face.

Sam doesn’t take it personally—too fucked out to remember how to be worried or insulted. He pushes Dean toward it, maybe a little too sloppy with just how much their bodies touch on the way, says, “Go for it,” in something like a mumble.

Dean gives him a look like he’s just turned down first aid with a bullet wound in his side. But he doesn’t argue, and Sam does something with his hand that might mean _It’s fine._ It is fine. _He’s_ fine. He just wants to sleep forever and forget that waking up with dried jizz in his shorts will suck so very much.

And if he climbs into Dean’s sleeping bag by mistake, well. His higher brain function is pretty well fried.

~*~

Sam’s ears have always popped every time an angel appears or disappears within a couple hundred feet of where he’s standing. He’s never mentioned it to Dean. Or anyone, actually. He doesn’t even think Cas knows. The truth is, it’s never felt normal, probably not something a guy who hadn’t been slurping demon blood as a baby would be able to notice.

Sam is just waking up, aching in a way that means he’s been sleeping for more than an hour, when his ears pop.

It’s dusky outside, and if Dean stuck to his plan then his brother is upstairs putting tarp over the windows to hold them off until the screens and pane glass they ordered comes in. Sam can hear a sharp scuffle of Dean’s feet overhead, a surprised back step and then nothing. Dean has either been _taken_ (some dark piece of Sam snarls) or it’s Castiel.

The staircase is eerily silent as he ascends it, not so much as creaking as he pads up in his socks, big toe peeking through on the right one, and an angel frog-sticker in his hand. His grip only loosens fractionally at the sound of Castiel’s voice responding to something from inside the master bedroom, his usual monotone running fast and just about as close to excited as Sam has ever heard him.

“—thing changed in the playing field, a violent shift for good, and you’re telling me neither of you had anything to do with it?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Cas.” If Dean sounded any more falsely casual he’d be talking about Ruby. “Out means out. We haven’t so much as snuffed a ghost since we moved in here.”

Francis seems to press kind of ominously around them; Sam chooses to blame his overactive imagination.

Castiel is too quiet for a split second, then in decidedly more somber tones, “Then perhaps Sam—“

“ _No.”_ Dean’s voice is ten kinds of back the fuck off, and then one more that even sends Sam back half a step before he remembers they can’t see him. “I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean adds, only fractionally as apologetic as he could sound, “but stay the hell away from my brother.”

“Dean—“ the angel starts, all concern.

“Just—No. I get that it’s irrational, okay, I do. But we are sitting this one out. I don’t want Sam so much as glancing at a saddle to get back into, do you hear me?”

“Of course,” Castiel says, perfectly toneless. “I only wished to share the good news.”

Sam’s ears pop.

He hesitates for three whole seconds before pushing open the door with the hand he’s not using to tuck the angel knife into his back pocket. Dean jumps for the second time in ten minutes, and all the buzzing in Sam’s head just stops.

“Hi,” he says. His voice is still thick from sleep, and if he never stops looking at Dean it’ll be okay.

“Hey,” Dean grunts back, gaze skittering sideways before he goes back to staple-gunning plastic across the window frame. He’s not quite tall enough to do the corner. It’s kind of fucking adorable.

Sam lets himself cross the room, lets himself get in Dean’s space just a little until he can reach over Dean’s head and pin the plastic flat, and Dean’s hesitation before he stretches up as high as he can to slam the staple gun down—his back to Sam’s front, close enough to touch, practically in Sam’s arms—makes something too hot flip in Sam’s stomach, even if Dean sidesteps as soon as he can.

“So I hear we scored one for the good guys,” Sam tries, and winces a little when Dean twitches at the word ‘scored.’

“Yeah,” Dean says, the hand holding the staple gun bumping up twice in a half-hearted cheer. “Go team. Sam, you can let go.”

He drops his arm instantly and the plastic holds, like he knew it would. It’s thick, opaque, just enough that he can see shapes blurred outside, colors, but not what they are. If it’s some sort of metaphor for his emotions, it’s just a little late. Sam feels sharp, Sam feels _everything_ , everything feels pink with new skin, healing, and for the first time in a long time each beat of his heart feels like it’s doing more than pumping out of reflex.

“Do you think it was us?”

Dean’s eyebrows climb right up into his hairline, all sarcasm and scorn. “Do I think that our gay incestuous sex had some effect on the outcome of an angelic civil war? Yeah, pull the other one.”

Sam snorts softly. “So that’s a no, then.”

Dean tosses the staple gun aside like it means nothing, like it won’t thud against the floorboards loud enough to make Sam reflexively flinch, and he won’t even turn around all the way to face him. Sam has only seen that look in his brother’s eyes twice—once at Dean’s “last” Christmas, once when Sam confronted him about being fucking terrified. Both times Dean had been looking at a slow march to hell with no way out.

The blood slipping through his arteries suddenly runs cold.

“Listen,” Dean says, “We’re just going to pretend today never happened. Alright? We’re just two normal brothers who do normal, brotherly things, and…it was a fluke. Don’t worry about it. Don’t even think about it. There’s nothing to think about.”

Sam folds his arms over his chest before he lifts his chin enough to look at Dean. “Is that an order?”

“Yes,” Dean says, like he’s completely forgotten how to pick up facial cues. “Yeah, in case you couldn’t tell. I’m ordering you to forget it.”

“Fuck you very much, Dean,” Sam snaps, pretty damn cheerfully for the circumstances.

Dean blinks, expression hardening into something Sam recognizes from their father’s arsenal. “Excuse me?”

“I said, _fuck you_.” Then, when Dean just stares at him, Sam helpfully points out, “You don’t mean it.”

The staple gun skitters across the floor with the force of Dean’s boot hitting it. “Since when do I have to—“

“Since now,” Sam decides with a nod. “I’m making spaghetti, you want some?”

He tries to leave while Dean’s still cursing, then forces down a shiver when Dean barking his name is enough to make him stop, make him turn back. He doesn’t do as good a job as he should in hiding it, by the look on Dean’s face, but guilt and embarrassment are nestled somewhere safe in the back of Sam’s mind with no intention of coming out to play. If his eyes are a little heavy lidded, Dean can deal with it.

“Yes?” he prompts. “Did you want something?”

Dean is gaping, frustrated to the point of betrayal. “What part of ‘gay incestuous sex’ were you not _there for?”_

“What part were _you_?”

And damn if Dean doesn’t look like Sam just said he wants to reupholster the Impala with the skin of small children.

“I feel good!” Sam’s voice is loud because Dean isn’t _listening_. “Dean, I’m _feeling!_ I feel almost a hundred percent, here, and you want me to pretend that had nothing to do with you? I can’t. You never want to do it again? That’s fine. You want to forget? Knock yourself out. But I’m sick and fucking tired of lying to myself, so…” He huffs a breath out through his nose and shakes his head, not prepared for this. “Spaghetti?” he snaps again, and leaves before Dean can answer.

~*~

The water takes ages to boil on their decrepit old stove, and it’s not just because Sam is staring it down the whole time, okay, it’s not. Watched pots _do_ boil; whoever came up with that saying was a moron.

It gives him too much time to think, which is a problem. There were some pretty morbid, freakish thoughts running through his head when he was grinding Dean into their house ( _their house their home and for a moment Sam thinks Francis sighs)_ but… Sam thinks about it, steam brushing against his face, and none of it was really…new. It would be easy to blame that on his time spent being soulless, which is why he doesn’t.

Does he have to blame it on anything? He’d never _do_ the things he’d thought of. But he’s not going to deny the thrill he got out of some of those images, the ones about Dean; what the hell would be the point? This just feels like another previously unexplored facet of being dangerously codependent.

Maybe he came back wrong. But maybe this is as right as he knows how to be.

He calls Dean down when dinner is ready, and Dean walks down those stairs like he expects to be attacked by some supernatural heavyweight once he hits the bottom. Or that’s what Sam’s guessing by the way his brother hesitates on the way down—when he gets a look at Dean’s face Dean looks nothing but awkward and uncomfortable, looking to Sam for some sort of clue as to where this is going. If he should expect poison in his food and know that he deserves it.

Sam rolls his eyes and says, “We don’t have a table,” and sits down in the living room with his back to the wall and the pasta pot at his side, two forks stuck in the middle and a tube of parmesan cheese by his knee. It only takes one more pointed look before Dean grabs them each a beer and settles at Sam’s side.

“Very _Lady and the Tramp,_ ” Dean remarks, right on schedule, stabbing and twirling his fork right in the middle of the noodles.

“I forgot to buy plates, sue me.” Sam spears just enough spaghetti that he’ll be able to fit it in his mouth, unlike some siblings he could name. Dean’s forkful is as big as a drumstick, and he eats it like it is one.

Dean sings with his mouth full, “ _Stick your hand in a crack, if you don’t get it back, it’s a moray_ …eel,” then smirks at the expression on Sam’s face and takes another bite, leaving a bright red smear of sauce on his chin.

 _This is how it’s going to be, huh?_ Sam thinks but doesn’t say. He doesn’t want to know what Dean’s smile would do.

As usual, Dean plucks the thought right out of his head—and decides to run in the opposite direction. “We’ll put a TV there,” he says, pointing with his entire hand. “Big one. Stupid big. And we’ll get a monster couch, maybe two, throw some rugs around, buy a plant.”

Sam has to work to swallow as something almost goes down the wrong pipe. “A plant?”

“Yeah. We never had plants growing up,” Dean shrugs, stabbing the spaghetti into submission. “And hey,” he adds, all brass, “if one of us doesn’t wander home with a stray dog by Christmas I know what’s going in your stocking.”

“Dean.”

“You got a preference? Like, that retriever, the dog we saw up in, you know—“

“ _Dean.”_

“’Cause, no offense, Princess, but I don’t think I could go for some yippy football sized thing—”

“Oh my god,” Sam says, loud enough that Dean has to shut up. How does he even explain…? “This can’t just be for me.”

Suddenly it’s easy to look at Dean, meet the fierce confusion and bank it down, like wrapping his bare hand around a burning coal. He hopes Dean gets it; he can’t think of any other words that might press it inside Dean’s skull. His brother is too good at manipulating words to trust them—nothing on, above, or under the earth could iron out that wrinkle in his character. Maybe it’s a good thing Sam has been to all three.

Then— “Eat your damn spaghetti,” Sam mutters, because it’s fucking exhausting sharing and caring.

“Bossy,” Dean says, but if it comes out a little too quiet, Sam pretends he doesn’t notice.

~*~

They get a mailbox. Dean turns it into a National Event when they actually get mail in it, even though it’s two pizza coupon books and an ad urging them to donate money to the NRA. “Aw, it’s cute when civilians think they should have guns,” Dean says before pitching it, but they get discounted pizza every day for a week until the fliers mysteriously disappear from where Dean tacked them first and foremost on their brand new fridge with a magnet shaped like Bugs Bunny.

Dean already has a corner picked out for where they’re going to put a tree as soon as December first hits, and he keeps sneaking in stupid Holiday knickknacks like he thinks Sam won’t notice. They buy a kitchen table, and plates and bowls and glasses so they can drink other things besides beer, and Sam talks Dean out of buying a 55” flat screen for a more moderately priced 42”, but it sits on the floor for a week because they forgot to buy anything to put it on or hang it with. Dean would sit with his nose pressed to it if Sam let him—as it is, he sits on the floor in front of their huge red couch while Sam sprawls across the cushions and pretends not to watch the TV lights flickering across his brother’s face.

They fight over curtains (“But they’re called Buckeye!” “It doesn’t matter what they’re—god, Dean, they should’ve been named _fugly_.”) and carpet (“Shag, no.” “But it—“ “I will shoot you in the face.”) and wallpaper (“I think this leafy swirl is almost like a devil’s trap.” “What exactly are you smoking, right now?”) and everything is so normal sometimes Sam takes a breath to scream before he realizes he really doesn’t want to.

He just wants Dean. He wants Dean with him every moment of every day, wants Dean beside him when he falls asleep and Dean beside him when he drifts awake, and he _gets it._ Wanting anything else would just be stupid.

Dean gives him casual orders, and Sam loves them but he doesn’t need them, mostly, not as badly as he used to. And sometimes he starts crying without realizing it, and sometimes he’ll get hit with an emotion so hard he has to sit quivering in the bathtub for an hour before he can breathe right, but when he wakes up sweating and cold Dean reaches over, rests a hand on his chest, tells him to breathe and he does, Dean tells him to sleep and he dozes. They aren’t too bad, the nightmares. Mostly Sam tries not to let regret eat at him, shaking it off as it digs tiny claws into his skin, because he can’t go back and fix it, he can’t stay up all night worrying for Dean when Dean is right here, within arm’s reach.

They still haven’t bought a bed.

 _Two beds,_ Sam corrects himself, realizing the error this time around. One for Sam and one for Dean. And the thing is, when it happens it’s going to hurt, the fallout is going to be _bad,_ because when they start fighting over who gets the master bedroom Sam is going to be fighting for something a lot more important, and Dean will be fighting just as hard for something else.

They do invest in sleeping pads, though. Dean claims they’re for camping, but he didn’t buy a tent.

~*~

It’s been a good couple of days—no nightmares, no shakes—so it catches Sam off-guard when Dean says in the middle of _Extreme Makeover: Home Edition_ , “Hand me the remote,” in a voice meant to be obeyed.

Sam does, of course, slowly but immediately, setting down the book he was reading so it splays across his chest, spine protesting. He’s trying to figure out what brought it on—Dean loves this show, they weren’t arguing over channels, this isn’t the commercial with the cartoon bears selling toilet paper that so weirdly creeps Dean the fuck out, so he has no clues, here. Not that he really needs them; it’s just a remote.

Dean’s finger taps against the mute restlessly without pushing down, and then he punches the off button and puts the hunk of plastic on the floor.

Sam doesn’t move.

Dean brings his knees up a little, socked heels catching on one of the good dozen throw rugs they have covering the scuffed and battered hardwood floor. His hands run up his thighs and catch on the way back; calluses maybe, or Dean just doesn’t know what to do with them. The fire crackles and twists, sound and light muted behind soot-smudged glass in the fireplace.

“You’ve been…doing better,” Dean chokes out, just when Sam has half convinced himself his brother is two seconds away from running without saying a word. “Haven’t you?” he asks without turning around, peeking at Sam from the corner of his eye like it doesn’t count if it’s peripheral.

“Yeah, Dean,” he says. He wants to stroke the back of Dean’s head, card his fingers through the fine bristle of it and the shape of Dean’s skull underneath, wants it so bad he has to clench his hand under his book and hope Dean doesn’t notice.

“That’s good, Sammy,” he murmurs, ducking to hide his cringing half-grin because he knows how chickflicky this all is. “I’m… That’s good.”

There’s something wired wrong in Sam’s genetic makeup that makes him want to go warm all over with the praise that this _isn’t._ It’s not how Dean meant it to sound.

Sam clears his throat and makes himself speak, question out of his mouth before he really acknowledged it was on his mind. “Hey, Dean? How…How did you know?”

“Know what?” Dean finally shifts enough to face him, and now it’s Sam’s turn to look away, frowning down at his book.

“You kept telling me… When I didn’t have my soul, you kept saying I wasn’t Sam, I wasn’t your little brother. And I could tell, you know? I could tell your skin was crawling just looking at me. I didn’t know what to feel about it, but I knew. So how could you tell I was me when my soul came back? I still couldn’t feel anything.”

“Yeah, well I could.” The answer is instantaneous, immediate. The way Dean only ever is when it’s the truth. Dean looks startled by it for a split second, and then it’s gone, frown of concentration chasing it away as he tries to explain.

“It was like… I don’t know, something just… Like when you crack your back and everything feels better, but you didn’t really know you were hurting before? But, ah… Guess that makes sense, right?” Dean glances upward, and it’s the slow crooked smile pulling at his lips as his gaze darts at Sam and then away. “Soul mates, and everything.”

When Sam takes a breath his lungs shake, like he hasn’t breathed in a year. “Yeah,” he says on the exhale. “And everything.”

“Sam,“ Dean starts, but Sam won’t hear it, can’t.

“Dean,” he says, book flopping to the floor as he gets up on one elbow, not one single inch of him touching his brother. “Dean,” he says, “tell me to kiss you.”

Dean’s eyes are so green, gold-flecked with firelight. “Sam—“

“ _Dean,”_ Sam begs, fingers digging grooves into the couch cushions. “Tell me to kiss you.”

And Dean snaps, “ _Sam!”_ and hauls him down with a rough handful of hair and Sam thinks, _oh_ , Sam thinks, _yes,_ and Dean gets up on his knees to push Sam down and kiss him wholly, utterly and completely, kiss him until every damn thing just falls away into the press of Dean’s mouth. Dean’s fingers slip up under Sam’s shirt and Sam wriggles and arches to give Dean room, sliding deeper into the sofa to make his shirt ride up more on its own. His hands tangle in Dean’s clothes, grip him tight and pull him close, and Dean breaks away with this _noise_ that makes every bit of Sam flush hot.

Dean grabs Sam’s wrists and pins them by his head, looming up on his haunches and Sam shudders and just melts. Yeah, he could get free, but it’s like choosing door number two when he knows there’s no car behind that one.

“Sammy,” Dean grinds out, and Sam has a split second to remember they aren’t out of the woods yet. “You tell me right now if this isn’t something you want. Tell me the truth.”

“Want it,” he says instantly, happy to obey. “Next question.”

Dean looks so lost for a minute, rocking a little just to press down harder and Sam tries not to pant so damn obviously. “How long?” he finally asks, and god, he sounds so lost, like there’s one piece of the puzzle he isn’t getting that’s going to fuck this all to hell.

“Thirteen,” Sam tells him, still hopelessly breathless. “You thought I was at the library. Came home early, some cheerleader was blowing you on the couch.”

“Jesus,” Dean breathes, like he’s hurting. “Sammy—“

“Wanted to do it.” Sam is so hard, and Dean is barely touching him, _fuck,_ he cants his hips up looking for anything, earns Dean’s wide, darkening stare and tugs it back with his voice. “Wanted to do that for you, you had sunburn all down your chest”—and that’s where that kink came from, huh—“and I just, god, you looked so blissed out. I choked myself on my fingers for _years_ wishing it was you.”

“Oh fuck, god damn it, _Sam.”_ Dean kisses him like he wants to shut him up, but that’s okay, that’s so okay, because Dean is climbing over him onto the couch, knees digging in on either side of Sam’s ribcage and Sam feels swallowed by Dean, surrounded by his scent and weight and taste. He could die right now, so damned content, and still so fucking needy. He whines deep in his throat, that ‘shameless’ switch flipped somewhere, and thinks _Please please please_ until it spills out in a whisper against Dean’s mouth.

Dean curses and somewhere in that sound is the jangling of metal—Sam has one lucid moment to think _If Dean smuggled in jingle bells when I wasn’t looking_ , before it clicks and Dean shoves his zipper down, belt hanging loose and obscene so close to Sam’s mouth. His lips part immediately, instinct or shock, because he can’t believe Dean would ever let him have this. He’s spent decades convincing himself this would never happen, he feels dizzy wrapping his head around it now.

His brother must see something in his expression—or it’s Dean’s bone deep insecurities creeping in—because he hesitates, and Sam tears his eyes away from the dark spot of precome already dampening the fabric of Dean’s boxers to look up at his face. Dean’s eyes are so dark it burns a little, meeting them.

Dean’s hesitation vanishes just as quickly as it came, smothered as the Winchester mule-headedness kicks into gear. “Open up for me, Sammy,” and he’s gentling it, but it’s an order. Sam lets his jaw fall open wider, and his eyelids almost flutter with the rush from doing right when Dean lets one wrist go to card a hand through Sam’s hair, murmuring, “Just like that. So good, Sam, you’re good.”

And then Dean’s boxers are down, shoved under his balls, and Sam gets that so brief squirm in his stomach from seeing something he’s not supposed to before that needy hunger eats him up and floods his mouth with spit. Dean is shaking, almost not enough to see, as he moves up Sam’s body and releases the other wrist to brace himself against the armrest, one foot slipping to the floor for leverage. “Hold onto me, Sam,” Dean growls, and Sam’s hands fit to the grooves of Dean’s hips like they were made to go there, yanking him forward to fill up Sam’s mouth.

Instantly Dean’s hand is there, tugging him back with a fistful of hair and Sam gasps, goes immediately still. “Did I tell you…” Dean starts but can’t finish it, sounds too porno or something and he tugs Sam forward by the roots, free hand holding his dick steady. “Slow, Sam,” Dean gets out, barely, wrecked. “Slow for me.”

Sam wants to _cry_ it feels so good, and Dean’s right, slow is better, slow means Sam can really feel it, really taste it, lave his tongue over every little groove and not worry about his gag reflex because he has time to feel it sliding in and back.

As soon as Dean sets up a rhythm he lets go of Sam’s hair, bracing his forearms on the couch and resting his head there, curling in so he can watch Sam suck him down. Sam can feel Dean’s hot panting breaths against his face, Dean’s unbuttoned shirt falling around them like a curtain, muffling and darkening and Dean’s hips, god, they keep jerking in Sam’s grasps, sweet aborted little thrusts like he can’t help himself, but he won’t fuck Sam’s mouth no matter how Sam pulls him in. Maybe because he likes the feel of Sam trying.

Sam feels every fattening twitch of Dean’s dick in his mouth each time he swallows a whine and digs his fingers into the cut of Dean’s hips, working his jeans until he can get at Dean’s skin. Dean groans like he’s been shot, tries to jerk back and Sam’s hands lock down, keeping him there—where the fuck else does he think he’s going to come? This upholstery is brand fucking new—and then Dean curses, a tangle of Sam’s name, and just shoves forward, and Sam _forgets language_ at the white hot slick of Dean on his tongue, filling his mouth all the way up.

“Oh Jesus…” Dean gasps out, still hunched over him and going boneless in pieces, like each muscle group is caving bit by trembling bit. “Jesus, _Sam._ ”

And yeah, Sam’s smug when he remembers how to be, but it’s all but unrecognizable in the vision-blurring glow of having done well, done right by Dean. _Not healthy,_ Sam thinks distantly, and sees how many teasing licks he can get in before Dean wriggles free with an oversensitive twist.

Not nearly as many as he’d hoped for. When Dean pulls out Sam gasps at the empty feeling he leaves behind, even when Dean accidentally smears a wet mix of saliva and come across Sam’s bottom lip crawling backwards down Sam’s body. Sam’s still lost in it when he feels Deans fingers nudging at his lip and refocuses on his brother above him, wearing this expression on his face like he wants to be sure Sam gets it all but he doesn’t know if he _should_ , and Sam can’t help it, he turns his head and catches Dean’s fingers in his mouth, humming contentment as the emptiness disappears.

Dean groans, forehead knocking against Sam’s chest. “Christ, Sammy, get a load of the oral fixation on you.” Sam nips his fingertips then laves between them, smirking at the hitch in Dean’s breathing, words spilling out of Dean in a half-air rush. “A-ahh—god damn son of a bitch.”

Sam used to think about what Dean’s hands would taste like—gun oil and powder, road grit, rock salt—but nowadays they just taste like skin, like the cedar planks Dean got to replace the warped siding, like paint chips from the upstairs bathroom. Sam licks him clean and can’t even think to be disappointed. He wants _everything._

He’s so caught up in tasting he almost doesn’t notice when Dean fumbles Sam’s belt open left-handed. He definitely tunes in when Dean yanks his briefs down, _Jesus_ , because—because he’s been so hard for so long now that his spine arches like a goddamned bow, and because it’s _Dean_ , and because Dean gives him a couple awkward strokes, pressing Sam down against his belly, smearing Sam’s precome all over his rucked up t-shirt and shaft, and then he says, “Fuck it,” says, “Shout if I’m doing this wrong,” and takes Sam in his mouth.

It takes exactly no talent to bring Sam off, he’s that close, and the thought of Dean— _The_ Dean, Dean with Those Lips, _Dean_ —not knowing how to suck a guy off because he’s _never done it before_ just blows Sam’s fucking mind, blows his wad all over the soft uncertain curl of Dean’s tongue and probably puts Dean off giving blowjobs all together by hitting the back of his throat with no warning, but right now Sam can’t care. The sounds he makes around Dean’s fingers are _obscene,_ and he doesn’t care about that either. His brother is _in him_ and he’s in _Dean_ and an asteroid could smash Francis to bits right now, nothing can be better than this.

Dean’s grumbling between coughs when he pulls off, but for some reason the wrinkles on his nose completely vanish when he gets a look at Sam, at the way Sam is losing every bit of tension from his body in an oh-so-very-languid stretch. Sam smiles at his brother when Dean takes his fingers back, partly because Dean’s knuckles are pruned up with spit and partly because he can, and wants to, and Dean will let Sam look at him like this, now, will actually let himself see it when Sam does.

“Could fall asleep right here,” Sam admits. His voice is absolutely wrecked, and his grin just grows when Dean can’t quite hide his reaction to that.

It’s just a faint shiver, but Dean shakes his head like he just moaned aloud, a flush that isn’t sunburn creeping up his cheeks. “I’ll, uh… Yeah, not gonna stop you.” He clears his throat, and then he starts to climb off the couch.

Sam has never been more grateful for the length of his legs than right now, when they make trapping Dean easy as breathing before he gets his hands on Dean and tugs him down, wriggling until he’s on his side pinning Dean between himself and the back of the couch. And Dean curses, of course he does, surprised and startled, but Sam says, “Come on, we’ve shared smaller spaces,” and that’s not logic Dean can argue with. Sam does up their belts—he does Dean’s first, tries not to feel reverential when he does it—and Dean relaxes by increments under Sam’s arm, most often accompanied by a reluctant sigh that Sam doesn’t buy for a minute.

Especially not when Sam’s breathing has evened out in that rhythm just before sleep, and Sam feels lips on his forehead, a hard, almost desperate, claiming kiss, and Sam tightens his grip on Dean and tumbles into dreams between one breath and the next.

~*~

He drifts awake just enough to settle the _danger danger_ throb in his brain when Dean wrestles out of Sam’s death grip some time later, and only gives in when Dean brushes the hair away from his face and says something about cooking dinner. Sam thinks that’s a good plan, especially since he doesn’t have to move.

His ears pop.

“ _God damn it, Castiel,_ ” Dean hisses, so loud that their neighbor—who lives eight miles to the north—can probably hear him. Sam resigns himself to being awake, but draws the line at opening his eyes. Even though he can’t remember the last time he heard Dean use Cas’s full name.

“Dean. Are you absolutely sure—“ the angel starts, not even bothering to be quiet.

“Yes, oh my god, yes I’m sure, get out of my fucking _house._ ”

Alright, enough. “Dean,” Sam grunts, pushing himself up to glare blearily over the back of the sofa. Castiel looks mildly surprised, which Sam supposes means that Sam looks like he got thoroughly, thoroughly fucked by his brother in the middle of the day in their actual living room. Which is…great.

Judging by the expression on Dean’s face, he thinks so too.

“Hey Cas,” Sam mutters, feeling his cheeks heat. “So, uh. Heard the war’s going good.”

“It is,” Castiel agrees. He hasn’t blinked yet. Sam is trying to work out if he should be worried. Cas might bust a seam if he tries any harder to work out how to say _thank you for engaging in incest._

“You want to stay for dinner?” Sam asks quickly, trying to distract him. Dean’s eyes go so wide it’s almost hilarious, because he can’t do any Fuck No What Are You Thinking hand signals while in Castiel’s line of sight.

“I should. Probably go,” Cas says, monotone breaking a little in the middle.

“Thanks for dropping by,” Dean says, smile tight with impatience, and Sam gets it, he does, Dean’s protective streak has been running rampant and unchecked since Crowley forked over Sam’s soul, but there’s no denying that when Dean gets his head on straight and remembers that he actually likes Cas enough to consider him a non-threat, he’s going to feel like an ass.

“What about next week sometime?” Sam asks as he stands, still kind of stupidly grateful that the couch is there as a buffer. “Dean’s trying to squeeze all the use he can out of that barbeque before the snow sets in.”

“I can barbeque in the snow,” Dean grumbles, but he looks like he might be clueing in. He gives Cas a sort of apologetic look—either that or a wince—and says louder, “Yeah, seriously. We bought more than two plates for a reason.”

The reason had been their slightly faulty dishwasher, but Castiel doesn’t need to know that.

Cas nods, looking a little more sure of himself, and says, “If they can spare me, I will…endeavor to bring potato salad. I am sincerely pleased to see you are doing well,” he adds before either of them can speak, giving them each a just-shy-of-significant stare, and Sam’s ears pop.

“Potato salad,” Dean mutters, and then, “Good old Cas,” as he turns away.

Sam follows him into the kitchen because, well, a lot of reasons, but mostly because he doesn’t like the set of Dean’s shoulders, and it’s just sinking in that not everything is fixed and settled. He wants to crowd Dean up against a wall and just hold him, rest his face against the crook of Dean’s neck and breathe in all of his doubt, let it out as nothing more than hot air.

“I’m so glad an angel of the lord knows we’re fucking,” Dean announces while Sam is still trying to figure out what to say. He’s slamming cupboards as he digs out pots and pans, olive oil, spices, but he has to face Sam for a split second before wrenching the freezer door open, and that’s where Sam gets him, shoulders the door closed and leans against it, pinning it shut. Dean glares, leaves it, turns to heat the oil.

He could just order Sam to move, and Sam would go. That he doesn’t is more telling than Dean probably thinks it is.

“You think our free pass to heaven just got revoked?” Sam asks, trying not to smirk too much.

The gas won’t catch, and Dean still won’t look at him. “I’m pretty sure incest is one of those biblical things without wriggle room.”

Sam shrugs. “Hey, maybe Cain and Abel just had some hardcore sexual tension that needed resolving.”

The pan drops down with a bang. “ _Dammit_ , Sam.” Dean braces himself against the cold stove, muscles knotting up under his shirt and his head hung low, jaw tight. Sam keeps himself so still, barely breathing, forcing his heart rate to calm down. Dean can’t do this to him. Not twice. Not after calling Sam his fucking soul mate.

“You’re gonna figure it out.” Dean’s voice is rough, quiet, and then he shoves away from the stove and makes himself face Sam. “You’re going to figure it out,” he repeats, louder but more wrecked, angry, and Sam digs his fingers in and won’t move, not yet. “You’re going to figure out how wrong this is and you’ll _take off,_ Sam, and I’m not right enough in the head to do anything but chase after you.”

“Good,” Sam says instantly, two steps closer to Dean before he realizes he’s moving. “If I’m ever stupid enough to run you catch me and you drag me back home.”

He grabs Dean’s face when he kisses him, just to make sure he won’t go anywhere, and he doesn’t think Dean likes it so much but fuck it, this is the way Sam knows how to kiss. His thumbs slip over the roughening edge of Dean’s jaw and he licks into Dean’s mouth when he shivers, and Sam thinks heaven can go fuck itself, seriously, if it doesn’t want them anymore. This is worth every bit of shit they’ve had to deal with, and all the shit they’ll still get into before they kick the bucket. If they can just have this.

“Soul mates,” Sam reminds Dean, words murmured into his mouth, and Dean makes this sound like a whine and shoves a hand in Sam’s hair, kissing him back, kissing for keeps this time. Sam nearly breaks it he’s grinning so hard, soul glowing so bright in his chest he can almost taste it, taste where the bit of Dean’s soul is tangled with his.

“God damn it, I’m buying you a puppy,” Dean growls against Sam’s lips, and even though he can still hear Dean thinking, _You wouldn’t leave a puppy_ —maybe because of it, because Dean can be so damn stupid sometimes—Sam can’t help but laugh.

~*~

They buy two beds.

The second one is in case Bobby drops by.

  
 _“kisses are a better fate than wisdom”_  
 _—e. e. cummings_

 **The End**

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is brand new! If you'd like to drop me a line at the lj post, that can be found [here.](http://queenklu.livejournal.com/233727.html?mode=reply)


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